AdFly banned in India -- Here's How to Bypass it!

The DoT (Department of Telecom) of India has made a surprise yet painful decision to ban AdFly, one of the major revenue sources for millions of bloggers across the world. Most bloggers haven't noticed it yet if I assume correctly as there wasn't any official announcement regarding the ban. Even I thought it was just a temporary shutdown for maintenance works but later, found out that this was the case. Not only it affects the bloggers but also the many users who try to access links to downloads or other stuff from bloggers who use AdFly. This pissed me off pretty well as I was getting such a good result after using AdFly even if its less efficient than AdSense.

If you don't know what AdFly is, its similar to AdSense but does not employ those colourful ads on your website. Instead, AdFly targets links. You must've noticed that sometimes, instead of taking you directly into the download page, another website appears (which is the Ad) and at the top, you get a Skip option after a delay of 5 seconds to continue to your download. AdFly is such a service (another one is LinkBucks) and pays pretty good comparing with the rest of the underdogs in the online Ad market.

The ban was a surprise for AdFly too and they made an announcement about it after they realized it and the team said that they are trying to discuss the matter with DoT to seek the reason and a reversal. However, for the time, you won't be able to directly access the existing AdFly links as they will point you to a blank page. However, don't worry as there are still ways to bypass the ban and continue to access AdFly links as well as for bloggers to continue earning from their website.

For Users

The trick is pretty simple. Use an HTTPS protocol instead of HTTP while accessing links. The HTTPS links are active and doesn't show any trouble. For example, if you want to access adf.ly/RKnU8

• http://adf.ly/RKnU8 won't work and will direct you to a blank page or a warning page.
• https://adf.ly/RKnU8 will work and take you to the usual page and you can skip to get to your destination.

To access your account, follow the same steps and instead of going to http://adf.ly , go to https://adf.ly. You'll get the same old home page and you can login and review your dashboard.

For those who shorten links, make sure you change the service to j.gs or q.gs instead of adf.ly since these aren't banned. Don't worry as these are the same as adf.ly even if the names are different and you will get the same revenue as adf.ly.

For those using the full page script or Website Entry Script, you need to make some modification in your code and use q.gs or j.gs instead of adf.ly. For that, add the below piece of code to the script and save it. For example, if I want to use j.gs , I'll add the below code to the script:

This will simply use the given service (within quotes) instead of adf.ly and your links will work as usual.

That's it folks. Let's hope the Govt. gives us a reasonable explanation for the surprise ban and cross our hands and pray to remove it for good! Will keep this post updated with more news.